There are three main types of chassis for supporting and connecting data systems. Specifically, there are rack chassis which are used in data centers and include a plurality of shelves to house one or more blade servers. Further, there are backplane and midplane chassis for use with printed circuit board cards in, for example, traditional edge or core systems. Currently, the cards or blades for use in the different systems are limited such that they are only able to couple with either rack chassis or backplane/midplane chassis, not both. As a result, these blades/cards are system dependent and switch to new types of systems and/or operating two types of systems creates significant costs because the cards/blades need to be replaced and/or duplicated in order to support the desired systems.